“The patient was in about a month’s time cured of this shameful disorder; and I advised him to abstain in future from this infamous practice of debauchery, and to remember the threat from the Most High, of an exclusion of the effeminate from the kingdom of Heaven,” 1 Cor. vi.[161].
M. Zimmerman writes me as follows: “One of the best Physicians that we have in Switzerland, M. Wepfer, whose authority cannot be of too great weight, avers his having cured a continual flux of seed, the consequence of self-pollution, with the help of the Tinctur. Mart. Ludovici. M. Weslin of Zurzach has, on his own experience, confirmed to me the same thing. As for me (adds my friend) I cannot say that I have seen such good effects from it.”
The Professor M. Stehelin mentions a man of letters, who was afflicted with an involuntary efflux of seed, without any ideas of venery, and who was cured by the use of wine with the martials and the bark. The remedies, and among others the waters of Swalbach, the embrocating with cold water the pubis and the perinæum, had not the same success with a young man, who had brought upon himself this disorder by self-pollution. He adds, that M. de Bongars, a celebrated Practitioner of Physic at Maseck, had cured two persons attacked with a debility of the vesiculæ seminales, by making them take, three times a day, eight or ten drops of Sydenham’s liquid laudanum, in a glass of Pontac wine, and by a decoction of sarsaparilla. M. Stehelin remarks, that though the opium is contrary to the indications, it has been advised by Etmullerus against too quick an ejaculation, where owing to an over-spirituousness in the seed. Be it here allowed me to add, that on attentively examining the advice of this famous practitioner, and on comparing the nature of the disorder, in certain cases, with the effects of opium, it is not difficult to conceive, that this remedy may sometimes be useful, but not in the case for which he prescribes it. He distinguishes, with a great deal of accuracy, the different kinds of runnings, he assigns the causes and the curative method of each kind, and then passing on to the ejaculation which comes just on the beginning of an erection, too quick (nimis citam,) he lays down two causes for it; first, the relaxation of the vesiculæ seminales; secondly, too boiling, too spirituous, too redundant a seminal liquid; and in this case it is that he orders opium[162]. But on what foundation? Opium, the quality of which, as a provocative to venery, stands so well demonstrated, a quality which Etmullerus himself points out, both in his small treatise on this medicine, and in this very place where he gives this advice, cannot but augment the cause of the disorder, and consequently thereby aggravate its symptoms. But the cases in which it may be of service, are, on the contrary, where the humors are crude, thin, aqueous, and the nerves, at the same time, of an excessive mobility. It is then known to be a remedy for these different accidents, that it suspends the irritability, and that it stops all the evacuations except perspiration. It cannot then be too often inculcated, that the greatest attention must be had not to prescribe opium, or opiates, but where they are proper, otherwise they are capable of doing great mischief. M. Tralles, in his excellent work, furnishes us with an observation, and the like is to be met with in other authors, which ought to oblige us to use a great deal of circumspection as to that medicine.
“A man (says he) who from his youth upwards had had a strong passion for self-pollutions, which had rendered him extremely weak, never took opium, either to moderate a cough, or a diarrhœa, or with any other intention, without having, in the night, and to his great detriment, lascivious dreams, accompanied with a spermatic emission[163].”
Here may I have leave to state a reflexion which presents itself naturally? It is this: the error of Etmullerus evidently proves:
First, How great an influence an exact theory has over practice, which, without its help, cannot be but often false and erroneous.
Secondly, How great an advantage must a man, furnished with such a theory, united with practice, have over one, who has no guide but a few observations, or who delivers himself wholly up to a systematical theory?
Thirdly, How much may not the reading of even the best practical authors, but who were destitute of that exact theory which is due to our times, deceive such as, on the reading of them, can only have an implicit faith in them, and who are ignorant of those principles which ought to serve for a touch-stone, to discern, in physic, what is the good ore, or the base alloy?
I shall conclude with two cases which fell under my observation; a greater number would be superfluous.